POTTSTOWN — Faced with constant flooding and a drop in demand for baseball field usage, the borough Parks and Recreation Department has a plan to eliminate one of the baseball fields in Memorial Park.
The plan was outlined during a public meeting on Thursday in borough hall. Parks and Recreation Director Michael Lenhart explained that there was a time when requests to rent the fields for tournament play generated enough money to pay for the repairs to all three fields after a flood.
Field repairs after the flood in 2020 were nearly $15,000, Lenhart said.
He said up until the 2019-2020 fiscal year, the fields generated about $20,000 in profit, which was enough to repair the grass and infield areas when floods hit, which is frequent. But since the pandemic and the fall-off in interest in youth baseball, as evidenced by the merger of the Pottstown and Pottsgrove Little League programs several years ago, field rentals are way down.
And that has the department questioning the need for three baseball fields, particularly when demand for multi-purpose fields is increased and the borough has few to offer.
With the upgrade and repair of baseball fields at Maple Street Park, the department feels the borough has enough baseball fields and needs more multi-purpose field space for games like soccer, lacrosse and field hockey. As a result, the plan is to eliminate field No. 2 as a baseball field and convert it into a multi-use field, which is easier and cheaper to repair after a flood than a baseball field.
Multi-purpose fields are “more resilient” to flood waters because there is no fencing to be damaged and no infield to be carried off by stormwater, he explained.
Flooding in the park has been constant since 2015, driven in part by development in upstream communities resulting in less permeable surface to absorb stormwater, Lenhart said. “There’s not much we can do about it. We’re at the bottom of the stream system, and we can’t tell other towns how to develop or manage their stormwater,” he said.
Additionally, while it is expensive and irksome to have to keep repairing the fields, they are in a floodplain, and that’s what it’s there for. “Better that than water in people’s basements on Walnut Street and Manatawny Street. That’s a case of us taking one for the team,” Lenhart said.
The remaining 60-foot field, also known as field 3, will be converted into a 90-foot baseball field, just like the adjacent field 1. This may help in attracting more tournament rentals, Lenhart said.
The work can be done by the borough’s own crew, so costs for the conversion will be minimal, he said.
“You’re taking an inevitable event and minimizing the financial and physical damage to borough property,” said Borough Councilman Andrew Monastra.
“This is something we’ve talked about for more than 10 years, and we do feel like it’s the right approach, but we wanted to let the public know before we act on it,” he said.
